AN OXFORD schoolmaster found himself in court after thrashing a pupil with a stick for playing truant.

But although 11-year-old Oswald Baker suffered bruises and marks to his body, magistrates found George Stace not guilty.

They decided that the boy deserved to be punished and the punishment was not excessive.

Oswald, son of gardener John Baker and his wife Sarah Ann, was a pupil at Headington village school in Oxford, where Mr Stace was the schoolmaster.

On the afternoon of January 31, 1893, Oswald had gone to see the burial of Police Constable Knapp in the village – his mother had told him he could take a half-day off school.

As the funeral procession set off, Mr Stace beckoned the boy to go to school. Oswald had other ideas and bolted as soon as the master’s back was turned.

Next day, Oswald and two other boys were thrashed with a stick by Mr Stace for disobedience.

Oswald claimed that he had been hit on the hands and across the legs, hurting him so much that he was “lame at first and had to walk on his toes”.

His father told Oxford Petty Sessions that he found his son crying with “three bruises on the front of his thigh and hands so swollen that he could not clench them”. He admitted that Oswald was cheeky, mischievous and “not a good boy” and that he occasionally hit him with a strap.

Giving evidence, Mr Stace said the boy was “making a fuss” and his fingers were “naturally swollen”.

He denied causing the bruising, saying “it was the colour of the boy’s skin”. He said he had not hit him on the front of his legs.

Robert Hitchings, a Headington surgeon, who examined Oswald, said he had a large bruise on his left leg and marks on the other leg, possibly caused by several blows on one spot with a stick.

But three pupils – Harry Shepherd, nine, Bertie Edney and William Price, both 13 – supported Mr Stace by saying he had not hit Oswald on the front of his legs. Then the vicar of Headington, Mr JH Scott-Tucker, went into the witness box to tell the court that he could not speak too highly of Mr Stace and that “his discipline was extremely moderate”.

That was enough to convince the Bench to dismiss the case, arguing that “the boy deserved to be punished and that he was not punished excessively”.

The case was reported in Jackson’s Oxford Journal in February 1893 and Memory Lane reader Paul Lyzba spotted a copy in the British Museum, where it is held as an example of how children were punished in Victorian England.

More than a century later, it is likely the verdict would have been completely different, and Mr Stace would have landed in prison.